1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to object-sharing technologies. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to an object sharing system, method and non-transitory computer readable storage medium for storing the method.
2. Description of Related Art
The ubiquity of computers and other digital devices like mobile smart phones and tablets are enabling digital data storage technologies to gradually replace conventional information preservation methods that traditionally use writing or printing, paper and physical storage. The advantage of digital data storage includes its convenient accessibility, large capacity and ability for long-term preservation of information. Also the rapid development of computer networks including the internet that can connect devices at almost anytime and anywhere make it easier to retrieve (download) and store (upload) information objects with high speed and reliability. Hence, the combination of digital data storage and globally accessible network communication have given rise to “cloud services” wherein users can store information artifacts (e.g. files) including such objects as e-mails, personal documents, photographs, audio and video recordings in “cloud services” that are provided by computers on the network and allow that information to be easily and quickly deposited, retrieved or shared with others. One particular form of sharing involves a process known as “synchronization” or “syncing” whereby information stored in a “cloud service” is copied (or replicated) either to or from one or more end-user accessible devices. Such “sync'ed” copies are made when devices are connected to the network and usually when the information in the “cloud service” or on a device is detected to have changed or is newly copied to or from a device. With this type of “synchronization” users may have access to information (copied to their device) even when the device is NOT connected to the network. Such “synchronization” is commonly used both by single users sharing information between multiple devices they own and use and/or multiple individuals sharing information for collaboration or communication. Typical “sync” implementations usually permit either individual files or collections of files (folders) to be designated as “shared”.
However, when information is shared using this type of “synchronization” the process of copying the files is often complicated by the fact that the name of the object to be shared from a particular source, whether the object to be shared is a single file or a collection of files (a folder), is already in use at the sharing destination device. In most conventional “synching” implementations such naming “collisions” are usually resolved either by moving the copied object to a “special” location in the receiving devices storage naming hierarchy or by automatically renaming the object to be copied. However, such modification of the original name and hierarchy path may confuse end users and make information difficult to find and/or may eliminate valuable contextual clues about the nature of the information that is conveyed by the files location in the naming hierarchy.
Consequently, what is needed is a “synchronizing” object-sharing system, method and non-transitory computer readable storage medium for storing information that handles such naming conflicts and includes methods to efficiently maintain the original hierarchical naming contexts.